From: IN%"gnu@toad.com" "John Gilmore" 16-SEP-1996 10:13:36.24

While you are at it, you could move just the censored material to a separate IP address from the rest of the archives, and issue Web redirects for requests sent to the old address. In fact it might be interesting to redirect readers to various mirror sites automatically, at random and in rotation. Thus, when someone connects to your web site to read censored material, they will be automatically redirected to one of dozens or hundreds of other places where the material can be found. The German censors will likely find it impossible to block access to all those sites (and each such site can also be changing its IP address periodically).

The first part (redirection at random) can be done via a CGI script; this may be useful for those wishing to put in links to a mirror site without having to choose a particular one or host it themselves. Incidentally, speaking of mirror sites, I'd be interested in locating scripts to do the following: A. Automatically redirect someone to an appropriate mirror site based upon closeness to their originating IP address B. Automatically poll (via crontab or similar mechanisms) between mirror sites (and to the anonymizer) to see if they're up, using the first part to redirect accordingly. -Allen